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Thursday, March 6, 2014

Language of Confusion: Parts

Body parts, to be specific. I
guess I could have been more clear in the title.

We’ve got hands, we’ve got legs,
we’ve got eyes, we’ve got toes…so many things that this is going to be another
multiparter. Haven’t done that in a while. Wait, don’t leave!

Arm

Arm the body part comes from the Old Englishearm (same meaning), and can be traced
further back to the Proto Germanicarmaz and Proto Indo Europeanar-, which means join. There’s also the
arm that means weapon. That arm comes by way of Old French and classical Latin, but before that,
it also came from ar-. So the two definitions of arm started out from the same
thing, became different words in different languages, only to come back
together as a homonym in English. Languages!

Leg

Leg first showed up in the late thirteenth century. It came from one of the Scandinavian languages
(not sure which one), which in turn came from Proto Germanic where it was lagjaz. Further back is a big question
mark, but it’s worth noting that “leg” replaced another word, the Old English shank.
Which today survives as a word for an improvised stabbing utensil.

Hand

Hand comes from the Old English hond/hand, which in
addition to meaning hand, meant control/possession, or a side, and before that
the proto Germanic khanduz. The interesting
fact about this one is that back in Old English, the plural of hond/hand was handa, and then in Middle English,
it was handen.

Foot

Foot comes from the Old English fot and Proto
Germanic fot. They didn’t even
attempt to change that. Anyway, before it was fot, it was the Proto Indo
European ped, which you still see in
Latin derived words like pedicure. The reason the plural of foot is feet is
because of what’s called a mutation of the oo in foot. Basically, a mutation is when saying a word wrong becomes so
common that it turns into the correct way of saying it. In this case, foot
underwent an i-mutation, where people stopped saying oo and started saying ee—think
of how you pronounce “women”; you don’t say woe-mehn, you say wim-min. In this
case, the mutation was used as the plural of foot.

That’s all for this week. Tune
in next week for…a bunch more of this stuff, I guess.